The Importance of Youth Exercise by Kyle O’Toole
[This is a guest post by Kyle O'Toole is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with National Strength and Conditioning Association and a Corrective Exercise Specialist and Certified Personal Trainer with National Academy of Sports Medicine. Kyle recently completed the Athletic Development Mentorship at Athletic Lab and you can reach him on Instagram @beyourownbest4life.] There has been a growing interest in youth fitness programs and the training of younger athletes has become more common in the past few years. Along with this growing interest has come an abundance of new perspectives on how to best work with children. Although researchers have looked at the safety and effectiveness of youth exercise programs there is still plenty of misinformation, and many parents are left wondering what is safe for their child.To complicate things, obesity in children is the worst it has ever been in our country. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, between the years 1999 and 2000, child and adolescent (ages 2-19) obesity was at 13.9%. In 2015 and 2016 that number rose to 18.5% and now obesity affects more than 13.7 million children and adolescents in the US. What’s worse is that the prevalence of obesity in children increases as they get older. Childhood obesity is 13.9% from ages 2 thru 5, 18.4% from ages 6 thru 11, and 20.6% from ages 12 thru 19 (Hales, Carroll, Fryar, & Ogden, 2017). There has never been a greater need for access to the correct information that will safely shift health markers, for your child, in the right direction. Here are the things you need to know about exercise and youth. Early Sport Specialization Although it currently has no standardized definition in literature, early sport specialization (ESS) [...]
